Archive for December, 2009

I’m white and just another stereotype
if you put me in a box I fit just right.
I can’t jump, I can’t swagger
but I rock like Mick Jagger
I watch Dr Who as a flower from my attic

I can fit right in
European or Puritan
speaking English ’cause it’s in
go to war for profits when
Americans ignore the prophets’ Armageddon

Don’t read this like hip hop
more like spoken word
more like just my words
the flow is quick and frantic
I hop from tangent to antigen
to a virus only I’m imagining

I have white misogynistic imperial guilt
burn in the sun
speak with Shakesperian wit
can’t play ball
and can’t rhyme a lick

I mock your divisions
Unique is not a category
I rise on the shoulders
of those who came before me
I rise on the sacrifices
of my ancestors
and your ancestors
who my ancestors
killed and exploited
while running social experiments
to see if kings or clergy
were better at ordering the masses
to give up all advantages
to the upper classes
In the name of democracy
all of our forefathers are either losers or bastards.

And all of our foremothers
our poor mothers
it’s hard to evaluate relative tragedy
we survived they survived
Putting up with so much for nothing
Their freedom was an adjustment
It’s insulting
Freedom is the default we should all be wanting.
We want case by case but we think in patterns
Not ‘fraid of the dark but we all buy lanterns

We need the fit to survive so they lied
I didn’t win the egg race to be cast aside
I was born to swim
not necessarily better
nor faster
but to be one of those that could go the distance so that somebody would make it.
I wonder if it was a close race and I imagine it probably was.
I probably just got lucky.

And I’m happy to be here
on the shoulders of racists
and colonialists
and faithheads

How did I survive to be alive in the same world that would vote for Bush?
I don’t know if I’m happy he’s here.
Or if I think the exploitation of anyone is fair.
And I realize that the costs of existence are unfairly distributed
And morally nauseating because it’s hard to appreciate
anything other than merit based rewards
and then merit is a confusing concept
when circumstances weed out so many people
And of the people who are left.
Oddballs like Obama being presidents after being raised in single parent households

what’s so special about that?
He shouldn’t have been so successful by the numbers.
And if he was that predisposed to success he must have had damn good genetics or something.
And that’s not merit.
There must have been other hard working
Congressmen and Senaterrorists
I use him as an example
but I voted for him because he deserved it.

The strongest don’t survive.
The smartest don’t either.
Some seem to float clueless
through the same life I fight through.

I’m white and just another stereotype
if you put me in a box I fit just right.
As much as anyone else would fit
when you’re determined to fit
everyone into the holes like we’re pigeons

It’s simple but it can’t be forgiven
if I am stuck in the box once I’m put in,
I won’t stop till I find a way out.

I was a quiet kid with books. I was a chatterbox once you knew me and I loved finding fun things to do even if the thing to do was chores. It didn’t matter to me if I had running water and I didn’t meet a computer until I was in high school.

I used to collect books from the Weekly Reader. I loved “science” kits for kids with stuff about stars, the solar system, and optical illusions. Animal things were great and I devoured Zoobooks except I got the sense that the subscription repeats after awhile. I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was too young to realize there was work behind capturing fascinating pictures of deep sea exotic creatures. Can you imagine meeting an otherworldly alien by merely jumping into the deep blue?

I had an older brother. I thought the girls in church were pretty. It didn’t matter which church as we were typically rotating between at least two at any given time. And it didn’t matter which girl because they were all nice to me if I had nerve enough to say “Hello” which was a bit of a coin toss. I had a younger sister but we seemed to find ourselves walking down to different paths despite growing up together. She stopped making sense the first of all my family.

We were all smart and sometimes that meant we got along and played strategic rounds of the board game of the hour and sometimes that meant none of us would confess to being guilty of whatever the parents were upset about. Even if we all got punished, nobody would have a smeared reputation if no one confessed, eh?

I was wrong about that. My brother was a truther and would typically be caught giving up after a marvelous caper. He snuck into a school and stole a CD-ROM which was useless at the time and huge only to turn himself in to my parents and then get caught by the school security returning the damned thing. I never took back the mouse I lifted… for better or worse. I was a bit of a truther as well. I would assume a statute of limitations of about 2 years and then let the dirt out on myself with the implication that I had clearly outgrown such childish behavior. And mostly that worked. I don’t know what my sister did. She was generally agreeable but I was never thrilled at her ability to be sneaky. She didn’t quite have that down pat. Threatening to leak information meant that leaking said information was inevitable. Maybe, I dunno. I don’t quite remember that much about my siblings even though I grew up with them. I got two more little siblings later, but they’re different. A different matter entirely with high hopes quite separate from the older brother and one sister.

I failed initially, but I wanted the ability to keep to myself. I wanted so much to be self-sufficient that I would skip grocery trips for the solitude of my own space. I didn’t like being alone, but I liked having the opportunity. It seemed tactical to be able to be alone because then I didn’t require approval. I didn’t have many choices that I felt I could make and express individuality so I made that one and stuck to it.

Rebellion was something of an accident. It was learned because most of the time I felt like I was in trouble before I was aware of what the crime was. Sure, after the fact it was true that I had known the rules before I committed the crime… most of the time, I just didn’t seem capable of following simple directions such as not stealing change from my mom’s purse or not using my pencil on my desk (I was just trying to get all the craft-time glue off of it). I ended up getting paddled by well meaning and harmless teachers. Harmless, because I wore corduroys. One time I got in trouble worth spankings and I was penalized further for backing away from said punishment and by the time the number of lashes hit 40 I was determined not to give in. I don’t see how any number above 40 is worst than knowing you gave up at that point. You might as well earn the high score and a sense of pride with the loss.

I was black-sheeped a little. Parents will do that when they get immature because kids don’t have anywhere to go. I think one of the things parents should know is that it’s really easy to cut self-esteem out of a person. All you have to do is make every little decision a kid makes into a fight. Kids don’t have the kind of energy to hold up and realize that they aren’t creating the problem. After all, we’re used to making lots of mistakes anyway. What’s 5,000 more? Just a little self confidence, that’s all.

I lived a sheltered life, but the library provided an unexpected back door into adult themes. I quickly learned how to describe seedy books in benign ways that would illustrate my love of literature when the broad swaths of literature were not nearly as interesting as swords and mermaids preferably held in the hands of the hero simultaneously.

I developed this quiet surface and boiling interior as growing up seemed to just add intensity to everything. I wrote dark poetry and drew twisted doodles for the appreciative disturbing glances of my classmates. I worked hard to create the possibility to one classmate that I might be the devil incarnate and to have her believe that the devil would actually be quite civil in person.

I didn’t fight drag out fights. When I left the house, I snuck. The only time I apologized to authority was if a friend would get in trouble. I got along with moms in a weird way that contributed. And maybe it’s because I was harmless. I was pretty much convinced that the first woman I nailed would be pregnant and I didn’t feel like dragging her into my mire until I changed the rules internally sometime in college. I tended to get a pass with people’s daughters for some reason anyway. Maybe it made sense and maybe it didn’t.

But everywhere I went, there was authority. And it scathed me the way authority represented that it was in charge and therefore had a right to be in charge. Else anarchy it threatened. If there were no rules there would be anarchy and everybody knows how bad anarchy is. No. I think anarchy is self-correcting. The rules keep coming back in some way no matter how many times I try to ignore them all.

But I’ve gotten better at making up my own rules and working them out with just those close to me and nobody else. I don’t know if I’d recommend this strategy in general because rebellion and I have come a long way and we’ve learned to coexist. We’re good friends actually and it’s one of those relationships you might need to understand before imitating me.

I never liked the principle actions in Romeo and Juliet because it’s pretty obvious myopic choices end in tragedy. But more than that the tragedy is based in the fact that the youngsters were all high strung: Tibalt, Mercutio, Romeo, and Juliet. Additionally the apothecary enabled stupid things but that’s what apothecaries do. Potions are not problem solving. Remember that.

Knowing that, I still stumbled into a relationship with a woman who infatuated me for years. Romantic words were spoken and thoughtlessness ran rampant. Life-and-deathly the romance meant everything was sacred between us and very little was left to be shared with outsiders which was more than stifling to both of us. She told me to take her even if she didn’t want it. That was a bad idea. And as such, it ended badly. Morally, she asked for it, but also it’s not freedom to violate the freedom of another. We love our contracts, but they should ultimately be founded in continued voluntary commitment in my opinion.

I’ve known certain people who seem much more validating without the cost. The chemistry has the potential to be just as spicy but like good friends, they’d never make a deal that kills either of us. It’s nice to know some people keep their heads about them because the chemistry that existed was bidirectional and evolved into something we still value.

The current relationship has tons of promise. It’s unnaturally relaxed. There’s probably a billion places our lack of formality could be exploited to suck the joy out of the relationship, but no one involved wants to make that kind of a choice. Like the friend I referenced she’s level headed and hesitant to trap me and I feel the same way about her. Whatever makes us who we are needs to continue because I dig the results.

But no matter how awesome love seems. I don’t intend to die for it. I won’t accept anyone else dying for me. I’m only here for living. My love is a pacifist because love shouldn’t kill.

I know what you expect but this article isn’t about that subject (read my other posts for context). I’ve had a bone to pick with one of my college buddies who casually considered humans to be resources just like any other resource to be used for the advancement of businessmen and politicians in order to create new products, processes, and societies. I’m sure he’s changed since then but I’ve always felt that friends were not to be used per se because using friends costs you what makes friends so awesome.

But there is something friends could be doing and that is putting like minded friends from different circles together. In this way, the new to each other friends have reason to believe there is in-group potential. That can lead to quicker report, the use of colorful jokes that are taken exactly as jokes and mutual friends can be used to translate mysterious communication elements.

There is a world full of interesting people. All of us our being inundated by people that we don’t click with so it wears down our interest in meeting brand new people just to not click with. But I’m still looking to meet new personalities. So let’s round up the friends we can make on our own, get some networks going across the world, and maybe we can put all the right people in touch with each other the personal way. And maybe that’ll work out.

It occurred to me after enjoying a thoughtful discussion with a friend that I should plainly say on my blog somewhere that I enjoy a very gray philosophy. I’m not at all in favor of absolutes. Sure that gives license to subjective reasons to overrule common sense and common law, but I actually think we make those kinds of decisions everyday actually. Most of us anyway. We should indeed be careful when our actions cross the established moral and legal codes not simply as a consequentialist (which I can only barely be considered one, but I do analyze potential consequences) but also so that we do not fail to take into account whatever wisdom the ages may have handed down. It’s one thing to explore the adventure of the moral gray zone. It is quite another to make victims of others’ quite different expectations and it is not always perfectly clear which situations are which. I guess in as much as I can subjectively choose my own feelings the justice of the matter might be based on the perspective of the other people involved. If they feel like co-adventurers in ambiguous things, then all is well. If person A bends the rules regarding person B and person B feels unjustly treated, my compassionate subjectivist moral consideration would still find person A guilty even if I can appreciate person A’s moral questioning.

Laws are designed for predictable incentives and deterrents to various aspects of our behavior. When we deviate from what is legal, we should act to minimize adverse consequences for anyone involved. That’s basically my point. And our ability to minimize the consequences factors heavily into how I judge gray areas.

He thinks she’s attractive
but he doesn’t mention
he knows she’s not interested
he knows that he owes
her attention to the Benjamins
If she’d have been richer
she’d never have friended him

The story could shorten
the drama it tracks him
She heard he was interested
so she asks him
He’s honest but he conflicts
with his answers
Attraction is ambiguous
when he knows he won’t act on it

He could walk in a room
and do everyone in it
He tubes even videos
with clowns doing midgets
In reality though
He’s not quite down with it
it’s case by case and any case
he never got round to it

So he wants to say yes
if he thought she’d appreciate
but then he’d have to explain
there’s more than one gatekeeper
He’s quite an experienced daydreamer
He doesn’t expect his fantasies
to play out in broad day either

She’s been stalked and used
the same words are old news
She never was with the right one
and so twos
seems twice as infinitely
unpalatable
it’s bull she says
I’ll never want that from you

He’s cool with that
just not how it’s phrased
he never liked choosing
all honesty anyway
but he’s dedicated
to legitimacy
he didn’t ask for parley
since he want any

He was energized
by the harmless and pointless of flirt
He’s hoping it can return
to normal with her
It’s a shame there can be such change
from an exchange of words
but he’s been around long enough
he’s fine and assured.

He doesn’t want what he doesn’t want
and what she doesn’t want either
That’s not how it plays out alone
in his daydreams
He might be a big kid looking for
playthings
But he respects other people
And he knows what that means.

There are some tricky issues in communication. Many of us have our sensitivities and our embarrassments. Not many things under the sun are new. I think a lot of Americans have a fairly fairytale sense of how romance should be, a sense that doesn’t mesh with reality. This is one example where communication gets chopped up because there is a poorly defined unattainable perfect standard to which we all fall short.

If you want just marriage, just one partner, for the whole life, by all means say that. But you can’t assume that. You can’t assume that anymore than you can assume that white culture is the right culture or that men understand female concerns. It’s beyond stupid to actually give that idea credibility because we’re dealing with highly subjective things. But we think that way often accidentally even though we don’t mean to approve of stupid ideas.

I think that if you love someone you help understand them and help support them even to the extent that they end up doing things that you don’t need or want but it’s not all about you if you are loving someone and you have any notions of practicality and efficiency so that you want your love to make a difference. Take a scenario I’ve been playing with where you’ve got a woman who wants a man and only one man and a man who had genuinely loved more than one woman. And to complicate this woman actually loves this one man because they click in so many ways. The difference of love pluralism might be one of the very few issues. What happens?

I know the text book American answer is that the man obviously needs to pick one woman he wants. But I’m saying there are other options AND that other similarly obvious beliefs are just as myopic. I’ll explain.

For starters each person is in charge of themselves and to think otherwise is counterproductive. Regarding two people: you and me, whatever quest you are on we meet when my quest intersects your quest in some sort of tangent. Your quest through life is important to you and mine is to me. If you are important to me then your quest is important to me at least meaning I would like to see you continue to follow it as you see fit. Your quest can’t be to remote control my behavior because that will create obviously conflicting objectives. You won’t succeed. I can’t support you down that road even if I love you and the whole relationship fizzles.

What remains unfair is methods of deceit. It’s wrong to be tricked into something where the deceiver absolutely knew the trick was being performed. There are bad people out there. Being open to individual quests does not imply that all quests are worthy just that each person has their own and it is the path that brings people together initially so it fed the interest and you should perpetuate that which makes your connection greater, meaning you should respect the quest of your loved ones.

Sure, I’m not really solving problems I’m adding complexity. But you do get several things from this. It seems to me that some of our less virtuous feelings such as jealousy, loneliness, enviousness, and rage are based on the fact that everybody is experiencing a similar quest and understands all the same values and priorities and somehow you’ve been victimized, left out or tricked in a way that it’s obvious to everybody what they did. These feelings suggest that a crime was in fact committed. For jealousy, the crime was one of disproportionate benefits going to the undeserving. for Loneliness the benefits are attention of people you value. Rage makes you feel slighted and immune from condemnation in trade and then you can go on the tirade.

We can sidestep all that. A person cannot be anything but what he is. He is more than one action but how much more? We’ll have to find a way to determine that on a case by case situation. Remember you don’t necessarily understand their quest, only that they are on one. Until you actually look and figure their quest out, you can’t compare yourself to them without overlooking a seriously important aspect of their individuality. Individuality is so important that looking at people as individuals instead of as women, as men, as Christians, as Arabs and treating them with women, men, Christian, or Arab gloves is considered bigoted. Treat me with your individual gloves, you asshole.

So the woman could love the man who loves more than one woman because the woman loves the man for something she sees and she gets something from the interaction. She might take advantage of his actions with the other lover to understand him better through observation. She might have her own things that she would pursue and now she has time. She might withdraw her love and move on. That’s her choice to make her choices. And when you love someone as she does him, she should leave his choices to him.

So when I was dating several people at the same time (great people all of them), they might have been low self-esteem people. They might have had all sorts of negative reasons why they would let me have their trust and intimacy. But I think the only real surprise was when I ended up very much favoring one of them because I had thought I wouldn’t be loving one person so much so soon after a previous relationship had gone all to hell. But if I ask you for something and you say yes to me, I cannot be held to a higher standard where secretly I totally know what you really meant. I will want to have considered what you really mean. But ultimately, I need to depend on you to be true to your quest. If “yes” is not on that quest, say “no”.

Isn’t that the way partners get true respect and true autonomy? When we stop trying to reign them in and think for them and instead try to work with them?

P.S. I have an awesome partner with no complaints. This post should not be seen as a complaint with her because I have none.

I got you used to groovy stuff I make up.
Not that it’s all made up.
Much is inspired by experience
shovel to turn graves up

I need sage to cover up the smell
of the sweat and the pain
not that it wasn’t entirely unexplained

or unplanned
it’s just that I earned it
with my own hands
It’s just that I thought someone
would understand
and they almost do but not all of them
and not all of me and I got a fan
or maybe two
can’t let them slip through
You may not get it all but thanks for trying to

Not a big hater
I don’t mind complexity
I got lots of dreams
that can’t all end up happily

But I’ve made a lot of success
Inspired once or twice yes
If I can be of assistance
I will try to go the distance

Oh and by the way, I like grooveshark all the sudden and I recommend it for listening to music.

I was drinking a lot 0f caffeine because I wasn’t sleeping well. Then I used it as part of my only eat one meal a day cost cutting strategy. I finally got back to eating 3 meals a day everyday and I’m feeling mostly energetic. Let’s see how far I can go without caffeine.